Prepaid wireless service (e.g., cellular service) is a form of wireless service in which a user must pay in advance for use of the wireless service. Typically, a user purchases from a prepaid wireless service provider a definite amount of usage of a wireless network (e.g., number of airtime minutes, amount of data transfer, number of messages) at an initially pre-defined exchange of monetary value versus units of usage. These measures of units of usage have commonly been valued as minutes of usage of the wireless network in the case of airtime minutes. When the user places or receives a call from their wireless device or otherwise uses the service, the user's pre-purchased airtime minutes or other appropriate units of usage are deducted from the user's account. The rate at which pre-purchased units of usage are deducted per unit of usage is known as the deduct rate. Once the pre-purchased units of usage have been exhausted, the user is denied service until the user purchases additional units or the user's account parameters are otherwise replenished.
Certain prepaid wireless devices possess internal accounting capabilities that allow for real-time call debiting of account parameters that are solely maintained within the wireless device, where such wireless devices include an internal memory which stores the deduct rate and a billing algorithm that monitors usage of the wireless device and debits the internally stored account parameters accordingly. In this manner, all accounting operations associated with use of the wireless device are performed within the wireless device itself, as opposed to traditional cell phone billing platforms in which accounts are managed, tracked and billed by components on the network side of the wireless network. Performing all accounting operations on the wireless device itself minimizes the communication traffic required between the wireless service provider's host processor that handles billing operations and the wireless device or other network components, thus reducing network traffic and congestion and expanding the overall traffic handling capacity of the wireless network.
Once prepaid units of usage have been exhausted on a prepaid wireless device possessing internal accounting capabilities, a replenishment message must be sent to the user's wireless device in order to replenish the user's internal account with additional units of usage. This has traditionally required individualized replenishment messages to be generated and transmitted to each specific prepaid wireless device in order for a wireless service provider to replenish prepaid units of usage or to update the deduct rate or other account parameters. For example, if a wireless service provider needed to replenish account parameters or update account settings for a large number of wireless devices at the same time (e.g., 500,000 users), this would require 500,000 individual messages to be generated and transmitted to each of the 500,000 wireless devices. These large numbers of individualized messages provide a tremendous burden on the service provider to create the individual messages and also create severe congestion on the wireless network itself to deliver such a large number of individual messages.